an
importation of Morse's School Geography would be of great service. We
very often lose our patience when we hear about the great danger of life
in America. I find very intelligent and respectable persons who fancy
that life is held by a slight tenure in the Union, and that law and
order are almost unknown. Now, the first week we were in London the
papers teemed with accounts of murders in various parts of England. One
newspaper detailed no less than eleven oases of murder, or executions on
account of murders. Poison, however, seems just at present the
prevailing method by which men and women are removed.

As to accidents in travel, we, no doubt, have our full share; but since
our arrival in England the railroad trains have had some pretty rough
shakings, and the results in loss of life and limb would have passed for
quite ugly enough, even had they happened in the west. I very much wish
you could have been with us on Easter Monday, when we passed the day at
Greenwich, and were at the renowned Greenwich Fair, which lasts for
three days. The scene of revelry takes place in the Park, a royal one,
and really a noble one. Here all the riff-raff and bobtail of London
repair in their finery, and have a time. You can form no notion of the
affair; it cannot be described. The upper part of the Park, towards the
Royal Observatory, is very steep, and down this boys and girls, men and
women, have a roll. Such scenes as are here to be witnessed we cannot
match. Nothing can exceed the doings that occur. All the public houses
swarm, and in no spot have I ever seen so many places for drinking as
are here. The working-men of London, and apprentices, with wires and
sweethearts, all turn out Easter Monday. It seems as though all the
horses, carts, chaises, and hackney coaches of the city were on the
road. We saw several enormous coal wagons crammed tightly with boys and
girls. On the fine heath, or down, that skirts the Park, are hundreds of
donkeys, and you are invited to take a halfpenny, penny, or twopenny
ride. All sorts of gambling are to be seen. One favorite game with the
youngsters was to have a tobacco box, full of coppers, stuck on a stick
standing in a hole, and then, for a halfpenny paid to the proprietor,
you are entitled to take a shy at the mark. If it falls into the hole,
you lose; if you knock it off, and away from the hole, you take it. It
_requires,_ I fancy, much adroitness and experience to make any thing at
"shying